Sisters and brothers

The president of the Catholic Health Association, “Sister” Carol Keehan, is proud and happy to uphold the “authority” of Catholic bishops to tell medical personnel and hospital administrators what to do, including, of course, telling them to let pregnant women die if it takes an abortion to save their lives. “Sister” Carol Keehan is saying yes, bishop, it is right and good that you and your bishop friends should be able to forbid doctors to save women’s lives. “Sister” Carol Keehan is endorsing the bishops’ wish for more women to die; she’s agreeing with them that that woman in Phoenix (with four young children) should be dead. With a “sister” like her who needs enemies?

Thank you again for taking the time to talk with Bishop Lynch and me about CHA’s position regarding the ethical and religious directives. I was pleased to hear of your appreciation of the role of Catholic hospitals in providing the healing ministry of Jesus to our country.

The “healing ministry of Jesus” means refusing to save the life of a pregnant woman.

I was happy to have the opportunity to assure you that publicly and privately, CHA has always said to sponsors, governing board members, manager and clinicians that an individual Bishop in his diocese is the authoritative interpreter of the ERDs. We explain that a Bishop has a right to interpret the ERDs and also to develop his own ethical and religious directives if he chooses.

Because he’s a Bishop. If he says you have to die, you have to die. Grovel, peasants.

Naturally, archbish Timothy Dolan is very pleased with this abject boot-licking. He sees that it bodes well for the future of more Catholic interference with medical matters and with secular laws on medical matters. Tim Dolan is just delighted at the prospect of further imposition of his nasty woman-hating reactionary murderous dogmas on all of us.

Now that the Patient Care Act is being discussed again, we have an opportunity to definitively resolve the outstanding questions about its inclusion of funding for abortion services and for plans that include abortion.

And an opportunity to guarantee the avoidable death of more women. Hooray.

I am gravely concerned about the problem of illegitimate government intrusion in our health care ministries. For example, significant and immediate concerns exist regarding the threats to conscience that we already identified while the Patient Care Act was under consideration.

He is gravely concerned that secular laws might interfere with his ability to see to it that women die when they could be saved.

17 Responses to “Sisters and brothers”

… the problem of illegitimate government intrusion in our health care ministries.

But then these aren’t legitimate hospitals where people may go for “legitimate” health care. Good to know. If the bishop can override legitimate medical standards just because he wants to call these places, what? Houses of Ministry? Then that’s his prerogative. We just need to know this ahead of time, so we can go somewhere else, and so these “ministries” can have their medical accreditations pulled.

I was about to ask: “How is it possible that she fails to see the implications of this?”, but then I recalled that there are virtually no loops that a person can twist themselves in for their faith.

I’m also continually amazed by the arch/bishop’s arrogance – it’s medievael in morality but also in the sense that they seem to regard the hospitals as private fiefs, theirs and theirs alone, and any outside views (let alone interference) is strictly verboten and will not be tolerated. And they still don’t understand why outsiders (or, in this case, anyone with a functioning conscience) might get a tad annoyed.

Mind you, I could have said all of this on any previous occasion that the RC pissed me off.

@ John H – reckon you’re right: unless they meet legit standards of healthcare, they don’t get to call them ‘hospitals’. Any suitable titles for an RC ‘health building’?

If parents can be prosecuted for neglecting their children and causing pain, injury and death due to religious convictions, then why not prosecute these bishops? They are after all inciting people to commit negligent homicide at the very least.

John H. It’s not that simple. If, as the NYT said recently, 15% of hospital beds in the US are in RCC facilities, there must be many people who do not have a choice of hospitals. It is in this case incumbent on the government to see that general standards of care are guaranteed at these RCC facilities, notwithstanding the peculiar aspects of RCC ethis. Emergency abortion care should be available where women’s health and/or lives are in danger, where women are the victims of rape or abuse, in case of ectopic pregnancy, etc. There should not be any question about these normal standards of care. Additionally, hospitals should not be able to refuse a woman’s choice to have her tubes “tied”, whatever individual Roman Catholics may themselves choose. It is ridiculous having a health care system which does not meet minimum standards of care, and the law should require this. Madness, absolute unadulterated madness. Seems to me that the Act of Succession, in so far as it keeps a Roman Catholic off the throne in the UK (and therefore Canada) is a damn good idea.

What I don’t seem to understand is that the very same church who goes out all on a limb to see that potential life survives; even to the detriment of potential mothers’ lives; never gave a rats ass about new-born babies who died. So conflictual, to say the least. For example, for generations, the Catholic Church ruled that babies who died before being baptised could not enter heaven – but were relegated to limbo. They were denied funerals and could not be buried in church graveyards. The hypocrisy beggars belief. Well, not really, when one considers its proven record on children in its care.

Where conflicts arise, it is again the bishop who provides the authoritative resolution based on his teaching office. Once such a resolution of a doubt has been given, it is no longer a question of competing moral theories or the offering of various ethical interpretations or opinions of the medical data that can still be legitimately espoused and followed. The matter has now reached the level of an authoritative resolution.

I am gravely concerned about the problem of illegitimate government intrusion in our health care ministries.

This is just fucked! The government funds catholic hospitals, at least it does here in OZ. There’s nothing illegitimate in a secular government overseeing secular funds provided for the care of all. Fute et callum tuum Bish!

If my wife needed a life-saving abortion, couldn’t be transferred to another hospital because of the seriousness of her condition, and died as a result, I’d sue for malpractice. Or something. There’s got to be some potential there. People come to a hospital with the reasonable assumption that they won’t knowingly let you die.

McWaffle, but you might not know that it had been malpractice. That’s a huge part of the problem. They don’t tell you (the patients or their relatives or friends) “you need X but we’re not going to give it to you, we’re going to do something else instead.” They just do it.